So I’ve Been Thinking:
About translating literature
into different languages….
Lets start with my favorite
novel in recent memory, Overseas by the very talented, master storyteller Beatriz
Williams, its been released in eight
countries so far– the US, Australia, Germany, Poland, Russia, Spain, Italy and
the Netherlands. And I wonder what during the translation, if anything gets
lost. Does it flow the same? Are the characters enriched enough to make them as
special in Polish as they were in English? Was the significance of the
historical time differences between the present and WWI explained so that the
reader in Germany understood the terror like I did in the US release copy? And
what about the love story, because it was epic, it survived the time and
distance barriers, did it also survive the barrier from English to Italian? Its
destined to become as far as I’m concerned a future piece of classic literature, so
did it come off to Russian readers that way too?
But then I think of all the
classics that have survived not only the barrier of different languages but
even different variations of the same language. Pieces like, Beowulf, The Iliad
and The Odyssey, Don Quixote, The Three Musketeers, Les Miserable’s,
War and Peace, Madame Bovary; well you get the picture.
Or is it true that
translating these ancient and not so ancient works of art are more accurately translated
today, perhaps we’ve come so far as to be able to get those subtleties to translate more
effectively than those of yesteryear.
Maybe today we can read all
these different classics of the past and hopefully the modern classics being
written today with the assurance that the translations today will be able to
preserve those works even better then they were in the past.
Have you bloggers ever
considered having your website translated into another language? I mean how
cool would that be.
I only speak English so I don’t
have any of the answers I raised above, my mother however speaks both English
and German. While she was visiting friends in Germany she read a Sci-Fi novel by
German author Fran Schåtzing called The Swarm, in German, she enjoyed it so
much that when she came home and learned that it had been translated into
English she bought it and read it again in English. She said that the read in
both languages were exceptional and it translated well. And well I have to
believe my mom. :)
So here are some things to
think about –
Do you think we lose anything
during the translation of novels?
Have you ever read a novel
either a classic or recent release that's been translated and if so which one?
Today's Gonereading item is:
a collection of posters & prints
click HERE for the buy page
